Make your own planking clamps. Plank on frame ships.

Bryian

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Hi gang,
I recently purchased on the internet some planking clamps for POF ship building from China.
They were so simple to make, and worked so wonderfully well, I decided to make some myself.
Photo below is the eBay purchased clamp, they were around $30-US plus delivery.IMG_2473.JPG
 
I have used these clamps from China have about 30 of them they work very good on pof builds, I THINK THEY ARE GREAT, to me i would rather spend the money and save the time of doing them myself, also there is a cost involved in the wood, machine screw waser and wing nut maybe small but it is there. Don
 
Hi Don,
I found the wing nuts on the thin Chinese screws strip the thread easily when you tighten up the clamps, so I used a thicker diameter screw and wing nut.

What diameter screw did you use (mm)?
Do they fit in between your Enterprise frames?

I'm thinking of batching these out by getting the profiles right on pieces on long strips of wood then just cutting the strip across the width. I would expect that's how they do it in the factory.
I feel it'll take more time to sand the finished pieces than it takes to profile and cut them.
 
I recently saw a method of modifying wood spring closing clothes pins by reversing the inside to outside putting the spring inside so that the former outside end forms a tight clip. I tried it without succes as everything wanted to jump out of position. OK I thought instead of reversing the spring location . . . just use my belt sander and sand out the inside of the clip a it is made. Fairly fast and it coses as tightly as the spring compression works and my sanding is true. Here are three views: basic clothes pin, upper is the suggested modifiction, and lower right is my simple sand it down method which works better for me and I can produce batches quickly. PT-2Clips.jpg
 
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